50 years of legal education in Nigeria: A critique

Continuing legal education (CLE; also known as MCLE (mandatory or minimum continuing legal education)) is a professional education of lawyers that takes place after their initial admission to the bar. It is to ensure that lawyers remain professionally competent throughout their careers. In the United Kingdom for instance, a lawyer has to be assessed every year before he is allowed to practise. To remain competent, the lawyer has to stay in touch with the profession. All Nigerian Lawyers in legal practice or employment must comply with the Nigerian Bar Association’s Mandatory Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) Programme.

The Nigerian Bar Association Institute of Continuing Legal Education (ICLE) serves as the Continuing Legal Education regulatory authority for the NBA and the profession by providing the standards and scope for the MCLE programme. The institute is overseen by the Board of the Nigerian Bar Association’s Mandatory Continuing Legal Education and works closely with Nigerian Bar Association Sections and the various local branches at large in developing programmes on Mandatory Continuing Legal Education.

In many states in the United States, Continuing Legal Education participation is required of attorneys to maintain their license to practise law. Continuing Legal Education requirements exist in many other jurisdictions, such as in Canada.

If we impose these same conditions here in Nigeria, we can be sure that any Lawyer who practises in Nigeria is not out of touch with the Profession32. This should be seen as a further contribution of legal education to the profession in Nigeria.

8. Conclusion

There is no doubt that legal education in Nigeria has come a long way since the days of “Igbosere”. We now have more campuses of the Nigerian Law school than before, more Faculties of Law, more law students and by extension, more lawyers. This is an encouraging development, but it is not enough that the period of 50 years of legal education has brought us more lawyers, we also need to know that their quality is such that they can stand among the best in the world. This should be our collective objective. Today’s lawyer lacks adequate preparation for the basics of legal practice and this lack of preparedness stems from the problems already highlighted. There is a need to adjust legal education in Nigeria to be more in tune with what obtains in the developed parts of the world. Happily, there have been concerted efforts made by the current Leadership of the Nigerian Law School to address these problems, some of which were inherited.

We should aim not only to have as many lawyers as possible, but to have lawyers we can be proud of at all times; both intellectually and otherwise.

We should be more forward thinking. What would legal education in Nigeria look like when it is 100 years old? Would it be better than it is presently or worse? These are the questions that should agitate our minds. Like I said earlier, it is not all gloom and doom. The profession has coped well after 50 years of legal education. We are not where we are supposed to be, but we are also not where we were before.

1. A Model Definition of the Practice of Law: If Not Now, When? An Alternative Approach To Defining the Practice of Law-Soha. F, Volume 61, Issue 4, Article 13, Washington and Lee Law Review. 9/1/2004.

2. Address delivered by Dr Tahir Mamman, Director General of the Nigerian Law School at the Presentation of Candidates for Call to the Nigerian Bar at the International Conference Centre, Abuja on 14 February, 2012.

4. Democracy And Socio-Economic Imbalance in Nigeria: the role of law. Being the full text of a Keynote Address delivered at the Nigerian Bar Association (Benin Branch) Law Week On June 24, 2013 at Fourteen Eighty Five Marquee, Edo Hotel Premises, No.4, Okada Drive, GRA, Benin City, Edo State. By Chief Joe-Kyari Gadzama, MFR, SAN, FCIArb. (UK).

5.Jurist: The Legal Education Network: History of the Legal Profession in Nigeria. Prof. Yemisi Akinseye George, (now SAN) Acting Head and Senior Lecturer, Department of Public and International Law, University of Ibadan.

6. Modernizing Legal Practice In Nigeria: Challenges And Prospects: Being The Full Text Of A Paper Delivered At The 2013 State Of The Legal Profession Lecture Of The Nigerian Institute Of Advanced Legal Studies (Nials) On August 06, 2013 At Shehu Musa Yar’adua Centre, Abuja By Chief Joe-Kyari Gadzama, MFR, SAN, FCIArb. (UK)+

7. mynlasportal.com (the Nigerian Law School’s official website) on Friday, September 27, 2013.

8. Soha F Turfler A Model Definition of the Practice of Law: If Not Now, When? An Alternative Approach To Defining the Practice of Law- Volume 61, Issue 4, Article 13, Washington and Lee Law Review. 9/1/2004.

9. The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin. October 5, 2010.

10. Training to Become a Lawyer in Nigeria’ – Idornigie, P O being a Chapter Contribution to the book The Anatomy of the Legal Profession in Nigeria published by the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, 2013

(Footnotes)

1 Now Legal Education (Consolidation, Etc) Act, Cap L10, LFN, 2004.

2 1962.

3 See the Address delivered by Dr Tahir Mamman, Director General of the Nigerian Law School at the Presentation of Candidates for Call to the Nigerian Bar at the International Conference Centre, Abuja on 14 February, 2012

4 See the Body of Benchers

’ Programme for the Call to the Nigerian Bar: 14 February, 2012 at page 5.

5 Soha F Turfler

A Model Definition of the Practice of Law: If Not Now, When? An Alternative Approach To Defining the Practice of Law

’ are used interchangeably. Indeed in the Legal Practitioners Act the word used and defined is

‘legal practitioner

’ while Rule 56 of the Rules of Professional Conduct for Legal Practitioners, 2007 defines the word

‘lawyer

’ by reference to the definition in the Act.

8 Ordinance No 4 of 1876.

9 These include experienced court clerks

10 See Supreme Court Ordinance No. 4 of 1876 that granted powers to the Chief Justice to admit persons to so practice.

11 Gray

’s Inn, Inner Temple, Lincoln

’s Inn and Middle Temple.

12 He was enrolled in England as Barrister in November 1879 and in Nigeria on 11 August, 1880. He set up practice first in Accra which was then part of the Southern Protectorate of Nigeria and then Lagos. He practised among self-taught attorneys. Thereafter there were few legal practitioners who established practice in Lagos, Calabar, Onitsha and Warri as sole practitioners.

13 Adewoye Fn 20 at 16

14 Doherty Fn 20 at 7

15 Ordinance No. 6 of 1914

16 A qualified lawyer may either be a non-graduate barrister or solicitor or a graduate barrister or solicitor. To qualify as barrister or solicitor, a person must possess Ordinary Level or its equivalent, join any of the four Inns of Court and pass the Bar Part I and II examinations or Law Society Examinations for Part I and II respectively. The graduate lawyers enjoyed some privileges

– a person with a law degree having a minimum of Second Class Honours is exempted from Bar/Law Society Part I examination, enjoyed enhanced salary and served shorter period of pupilage.

18 In 1962, one campus was established in Lagos but the Nigerian Law School now has campuses in Lagos, Abuja, Kano, Enugu, Yenogoa and Yola.

19 Now Legal Education (Consolidation, Etc) Act, Cap L10, LFN, 2004

20 The other enactment is the Legal Practitioners Act, Cap L11, LFN 2004.

21

Problem of legal education in Nigeria

Hon. Justice M.O. Onolaja, OFR, JCA, LLD, is the former Chairman of the Council of Legal Education

22 1962

23 Culled from the mynlasportal.com (the Nigerian Law School’s official website) on Friday, September 27, 2013.

24

Modernizing legal practice in Nigeria: challenges and prospects:

Being the full text of a paper delivered at the 2013 state of the legal profession lecture of the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (Nials) on August 06, 2013 at Shehu Musa Yar’Adua centre, Abuja by Chiefjoe-Kyari Gadzama, MFR, SAN, FCIArb. (UK)+

25 Idornigie Fn 21 at 5.

26

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bar

Professional Training Course accessed on 18 May, 2012

27 The ten institutions are:

BPP Law School, London, BPP Law School, Leeds, University of the West of Engl and, Bristol, Cardiff University, Cardiff, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, The College of Law, London, the College of Law, Birmingham, City Law School, London, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, Northumbra University, Newcastle upon Tyne and Kaplan Law School, London

28Court Dismisses Aturu’s Suit on Law School’s Fees-This Day Newspaper, October 18, 2013.